There may be people wondering why Hideo Tokoro punched/slapped Kiyoshi Tamura before their fight on K-1 Dynamite!! 2007. Here is a short story behind it.

Akira Maeda doesn’t like Pride. He blames them for his own organization, RINGS, dying in 2002. Kiyoshi Tamura was a student of Maeda and debuted in RINGS in 1996. He was an important fighter there at one time so when he joined Pride in 2002 you could imagine how Maeda felt.

Hideo Tokoro is a big fan of Maeda and also fought in RINGS once. He has also spent most of his career in the ZST organization which uses very similar rules to RINGS rules.

Now you probably have an idea of why those events between Tokoro, Tamura and Maeda took place on NYE, there might be other reasons than what is written here, but this is what I know.

Maeda has announced that he is holding an amateur MMA event in March, “The Outsider”, with Hero’s rules. This is probably because of FEG working with the Ex-Pride staff.

Here are two GIF animations from before (Tamura and Tokoro) and after the fight (Tamura and Maeda). Thanks to Gryphon’s Japanese blog for finding a link to the second one, it wasn’t shown on the regular TV broadcast.

On February 1st Chute Boxe fighter Evangelista Cyborg will face Pride veteran Gegard Mousasi at HCF Destiny in Canada. This is a tough fight for Cyborg as Mousasi is one of the best young fighters in MMA today, at only 22 years old he has already had over 20 pro MMA fights and fought fighters such as Akihiro Gono, Hector Lombard and Makoto Takimoto.

After this fight Cyborg is scheduled to take on Makoto Takimoto at the first ever Sengoku event in March. Mousasi beat Takimoto in Pride so these fights will create some history together.

In other news concerning Sengoku, Zach Arnold of FightOpinion.com writes that WVR is considering Josh Barnett as an opponent for Hidehiko Yoshida. Roger Gracie is heavily rumored as being Yoshida’s opponent right now but we will have to wait and see what happens.

GRACIEMAG.com has a new article up on their site with comments by Roger Gracie saying that he has accepted all the terms for a fight against Hidehiko Yoshida at the first ever Sengoku event on March 5th.

This fight continues the history of big fights between legendary Japanese fighters and the top of the Gracie family.

Two new fights have been announced for the first ever Sengoku event on March 5th. Kazuo Misaki, who comes from a NYE victory against Yoshihiro Akiyama, will take on Shooto Light Heavyweight champion Siyar Bahadurzada. In the other announced fight another NYE victor will participate as Makoto Takimoto goes up against Evangelista Cyborg.

Update: Kazuo Misaki vs. Yoshihiro Akiyama has now been ruled a no contest after Yarennoka! officials reviewed the fight. You can read more about it here. Sadaharu Tanigawa wants a rematch in Korea.